“Ay,” approved he. “It has a fair sound in your mouth. Would I were your lord! What is your name?”
She told him “Pomona.” Whereat he laughed, and repeated it as if he liked the sound. Then he looked at the east, and behold, the sun had risen, a full ball of crimson in a swimming sea of rose. The light glimmered upon his pale cheek, and on the fine laces of his shirt, redly, as if with stains of new blood.
“I must hence,” he said, and his voice had a stern, far-away sound. “Farewell, Pomona; wilt thou not wish me well?”
“My lord?”
“Wilt thou not?”
“Oh, indeed, my lord, I do.” And she was moved, on a sudden, she knew not why, and the tears gathered like a mist in her eyes. “With all my heart,” she said.
He made her a final bow, bending till his curls fell over his face.
“I thank you.”
She watched him walk away from her in and out the apple trees with his careless stride, and leap the little ditch again; and so on down the road.
And when he was lost to her sight, she still stood looking at the point where the way dipped and vanished and she had seen the last flutter of the gray feathers.